Sapporo weather by month — averages, rainfall & climate trends
Snow is Sapporo's signature: the city that hosted Asia's first Winter Olympics has turned its deep winters into a celebration, crowned by an annual snow festival that draws enormous crowds. Average temperatures and rainfall by month, a climate graph, today's conditions versus the long-term average, and how the climate has shifted since 1940 — all on one page for Sapporo, Japan.
Today vs average
−1.3°Cabout average
How it’s changed
Right now
What it's doing today vs the historical average for this date.
Right now
22.9°
24°20°
26°20°25°20°28°19°27°19°27°18°
26°18°On this date — July 20
About average
- Record high: 30.3° · 2021
- Record low: 12.7° · 1954
- One year ago: 29.6°
Every July 20 in history — coldest to hottest
Dots show daily highs (top) and lows (bottom) for each July 20 on record (n = 86). Outlined dots are today's forecast.
Area we sample
Each city's history comes from one ERA5 grid cell — about 28 km across, shown by the dashed box. Near mountains or coasts, conditions can vary across the cell.
Location & data
Historical weather for Sapporo is sampled from the ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at 43.07°N, 141.35°E, with daily records since 1940.
- Coordinates
- 43.07°N, 141.35°E
- Time zone
- Asia/Tokyo
- Period
- 1940–2026
- Data source
- ERA5 (ECMWF)
Last 30 days
27 of the last 30 days were warmer than the historical average for that date. Average difference: +1.5°C.
Each bar is one day, from morning low to afternoon high. Warm-colored bars are days whose mean ran above average; cool bars ran below. The dot inside the bar is the daily mean. The shaded band is the typical 10–90% range expected for that date. Average = the day's mean temperature averaged across every year of record (1940–2026) for that calendar date.
This date over the years
One dot per year — the mean temperature on this calendar date. Dots are warmer or cooler than the long-term average (dashed line); the shaded band is the typical 10–90% range, and the highlighted dot is today's forecast. Based on ERA5 reanalysis — modelled estimates, not station readings.
Weather by month
Average temperatures and rainfall for each month — what a typical year looks like, from the full record.Climate overview
Sapporo is built on the alluvial fan that the Toyohira River has laid down in the southwest of the Ishikari Plain, in western Hokkaido, with peaks such as Mount Teine and Mount Moiwa rising at its edges. The climate is humid continental (Köppen Dfa), and summer and winter sit far apart in temperature. Winter's defining mechanism is cold air spilling southeastward from the Siberian High toward the Aleutian Low: crossing the Tsushima Current, it picks up moisture and unloads it over western Hokkaido as snow.
Heavy snow is the city's identity — few large cities anywhere receive so much — and it underpins the annual Sapporo Snow Festival as well as the city's hosting of the 1972 Winter Olympics, which brought the Winter Games to Asia for the first time. Summers are far gentler, though late August 2023 brought heat of an intensity the city has rarely experienced.
The warmest month is August, with a daily mean around 22.2°C and typical afternoon highs of 25.6°C. In January, daily means drop to roughly -5.6°C, with nights dipping to -8.9°C. Frost shows up on around 120 mornings a year.
Sapporo picks up roughly 1243 mm a year, with a peak of 182 mm in August and as little as 61 mm in February. Precipitation falls on roughly 195 days in a typical year.
Over the full record (since 1940), the annual mean temperature in Sapporo has risen by 2.5°C between its first decade and its last. That last decade has also been the warmest in the record.
Climate graph (climograph)
August is the warmest month, January the coolest — a yearly swing of 28°C. Wettest month: August (~182 mm). Whole year averages ~1243 mm of rain.
Bars = average monthly rainfall (right axis). Lines = average daily high and low (left axis). Average = each month's value averaged across every year of record (1940–2026).
Monthly wind
Average daily peak wind at 10 m, by month.
Monthly solar energy
Average daily incoming solar energy in megajoules per square metre — a measured proxy for how sunny the month is.
Sapporo month by month — what to expect
Typical conditions for each month, averaged across the full record (since 1940). Daylight is the time from sunrise to sunset. Record high/low are the most extreme values in the ERA5 dataset (modelled since 1940), so they can differ from official weather-station readings.
| Month | Avg high | Avg low | Rain | Daylight | Record high | Record low |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | -2.2° | -8.9° | 69 mm | 9.2 h | 7.3° (1990) | -21.2° (1940) |
| February | -1.3° | -8.3° | 61 mm | 10.3 h | 12.0° (2024) | -20.0° (1978) |
| March | 3.1° | -4.0° | 75 mm | 11.6 h | 15.8° (2021) | -17.0° (1986) |
| April | 10.5° | 2.5° | 83 mm | 13.2 h | 26.7° (1998) | -9.2° (1949) |
| May | 16.8° | 8.4° | 94 mm | 14.5 h | 32.0° (2019) | -1.2° (1947) |
| June | 20.5° | 13.3° | 97 mm | 15.2 h | 31.9° (2025) | 4.9° (1954) |
| July | 24.3° | 18.0° | 129 mm | 14.9 h | 33.9° (2025) | 8.6° (1979) |
| August | 25.6° | 19.5° | 182 mm | 13.8 h | 34.2° (1994) | 10.0° (1971) |
| September | 21.7° | 14.6° | 162 mm | 12.3 h | 31.0° (2010) | 3.2° (1964) |
| October | 15.3° | 7.8° | 113 mm | 10.8 h | 27.5° (2022) | -1.7° (1950) |
| November | 7.3° | 1.2° | 98 mm | 9.5 h | 21.0° (2023) | -10.7° (1998) |
| December | 0.6° | -5.2° | 82 mm | 8.8 h | 13.9° (1989) | -18.5° (1952) |
How it has changed
Year-by-year signals from 1940 to today.Climate stripes
Annual mean shifted from 1940–1949 to 2016–2025 by +2.5°C.
Each vertical stripe is one year. Color encodes how much that year's annual mean differed from the long-term average. Average = each year's annual mean compared to the average of all years (1940–2026). cooler ← → warmer
Annual mean temperature
Long-term trend: +0.29°C per decade.
One point per year — the temperature averaged across the whole year. The dashed line is the least-squares long-term trend. Based on ERA5 reanalysis — modelled estimates, not station readings.
Seasonal warming
Dec–Feb is warming fastest: +0.38°C per decade.
Each faint line is one three-month period's average per year; the bold dashed line is its long-term trend. Different parts of the year often warm at different rates. Based on ERA5 reanalysis — modelled estimates, not station readings.
Hot days vs frost days
Days ≥ 30°C per year: 0.6 early in the record → 7.6 recently. Frost days: 147 → 118.
Thin lines are raw yearly counts; thick lines are the smoothed trend that removes year-to-year noise. The hot-day threshold is auto-picked per city so the line actually moves. Average = a centered 5-year rolling average to smooth weather noise.
Yearly hot & cold extremes
All-time high in 1994, all-time low in 1940: 34.2°C / -21.2°C.
One point per year — the single hottest and coldest day recorded that year.
Annual rainfall
~1243 mm/year on average. Last decade ran +7% vs that average. Long-term trend: +23 mm per decade.
One bar per year of total rainfall. Dashed line is the long-term average. Average = the average annual rainfall across every year of record (1940–2026).
Day-by-day grid
Each tiny square is one calendar day across the full record — ~30,000 days per city. Use the mode switch above the chart: Anomaly colors each day by how far it ran from the historical average for that date (red = warmer, blue = cooler), Daily mean temp shows the absolute mean temperature for the day (useful to see seasons and heatwaves), and Precipitation shows daily rainfall (useful to spot wet/dry seasons and droughts). Average = the long-term average for that calendar date (1940–2026).